Many tennis coaches and teaching professionals characterize the Eastern backhand stroke as "the most natural stroke" in the game of tennis. This is a difficult proposition to sell to most players of average ability, or even to many players of above average ability, in view of their experience of finding the backhand stroke to be one of the hardest in the game for them to feel comfortable with.
The forehand stroke is ordinarily the first ground stroke that a tennis beginner learns, and most players continue to feel more comfortable with that stroke than with the backhand stroke even after years of experience. One of the basic continuing problems for many players in attempting to master the fundamentals of the backhand stroke is for the player to learn to place the racquet holding hand upon the racquet handle in the proper manner to position the racquet head in the desired plane with respect to the court surface as the ball is struck and carried forward during the rest of the stroke. Once a proper grip is assured, whether from good playing habits or by a device such as the grip guide of this invention, the successful execution of the backhand stroke comes much more easily.
The earliest patent known to applicants that discloses a grip for a tennis racquet handle is U.S. Pat. No. 412,479 issued to Davis in 1889. The grip in this patent is positioned underneath the user's hand. This was the principal expedient utilized for racquet handle grips for almost a century, including the grips covered by such patents as Berzatzy U.S. Pat. No. 3,203,697 issued in 1965, Jones U.S. Pat. No. 3,868,110 issued in 1975, Ballog U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,598 issued in 1975 British Pat. No. 1,389,488 issued in 1975, Cope U.S. Pat. No. Des. 240,367 issued in 1976, Soldavini U.S. Pat. No. 4,006,896 issued in 1977, Sweet U.S. Pat. No. Des. 245,443, also issued in 1977, and German application 2928995 laid open in 1981.
This concentration on grips underlying the hand for tennis racquets was paralleled by a similar focus on such grips for golf clubs. Examples of such patents are Connell U.S. Pat. No. 1,855,126 issued in 1932, Link U.S. Pat. No. 2,088,008 issued in 1937, Wheeler et al. U.S. Pat. No. Des. 125,602 issued in 1941, Strazza U.S. Pat. No. Des. 156,578 issued in 1949, Strickler U.S. Pat. No. 2,765,174 issued in 1956, Turner U.S. Pat. No. 2,877,018 issued in 1959, Lowden U.S. Pat. No. 2,962,288 issued in 1960, British patent No. 3,111,322 issued in 1963, Rosasco U.S. Pat. No. 3,706,453 issued in 1972, and Takeshima U.S. Pat. No. 4,116,440 issued in 1978.
Other approaches to the design of special grips for golf clubs are exemplified by two patents disclosing guides overlying the hand, Mohr U.S. Pat. No. 1,843,039 issued in 1932 and Hara U.S. Pat. No. 2,645,484 issued in 1953, and by a group of patents disclosing guides providing notches for the tips of the player's thumbs and index fingers, Holden et al. U.S. Pat. No. 1,997,364 issued in 1935, Yeager U.S. Pat. No. 2,223,437 issued in 1940, Strazza U.S. Pat. No. 2,484,762 issued in 1949, Schimansky U.S. Pat. No. 2,710,190 issued in 1955, Jacques U.S. Pat. No. 3,806,130 issued in 1974, Prisco U.S. Pat. No. 3,860,243 issued in 1975, and Kokes U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,326 issued in 1982.
Wright U.S. Pat. No. 3,817,521, issued in 1974, followed this latter approach for a grip guide for tennis racquets.
Despite all the inventive activity in the search for grips and grip guides for tennis racquets and golf clubs that will assist a player in maintaining the proper grip upon the handle of the racquet or the shaft of the club, only one prior patent is known to applicants that involves the concept of guiding the user's hand or hands from somewhere other than underneath the hand, overlying the hand, or at the tips of the fingers or thumbs of the hands. And in that patent, Bertucci U.S. Pat. No. 4,072,311 issued in 1978, the purpose of the invention (to spread the index finger and the next adjacent finger of a tennis player's racquet hand during forehand shots) is entirely different from applicants' purpose, and is accomplished through a structure wholly different from applicants' unique structure.